


What resembles the grave

by wastrelwoods



Series: bad things happen bingo [2]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Aromantic Character, Blood and Injury, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Team Bonding, a master thief...an ace pilot...., and the feral raccoon he found in a dumpster and made friends with (juno steel), mentions of suicidality/references to past attempt, the whole carte blanche is present but not heavily featured
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-29 21:29:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21416968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/wastrelwoods
Summary: "Buddy and I are agreed that your particular knack for getting into trouble often proves advantageous," Jet says calmly."Oh.""That is not to say I am happy to see you put yourself in harm's way," he continues.Juno grits his teeth, tries to bite back the urge to argue, because there's no pity or blame to be found in the big guy's even tone, and even with a headache this sharp Juno knows better than to pick a fight with someone who's being reasonable and trying to, god forbid, express an interest in his well-being. "…Yeah."
Relationships: Jet Sikuliaq & Juno Steel
Series: bad things happen bingo [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1281491
Comments: 31
Kudos: 351





	What resembles the grave

**Author's Note:**

> title and inspiration taken from "what resembles the grave but isn't", by anne boyer, which is a real mother FUCKER of a badass piece of poetry and can be found in its entirety here (https://anneboyer.tumblr.com/post/48690531600)
> 
> _"--sometimes falling into a set of holes whose structures are predictable, ideological, and long dug, often falling into this set of structural and impersonal holes; sometimes falling into holes with other people, with other people, saying “this is not our mass grave, get out of this hole,” all together getting out of the hole together, hands and legs and arms and human ladders of each other to get out of the hole that is not the mass grave but that will only be gotten out of together--"_

The smell of smoke and the shriek of sirens fades into the distance. Juno floats, clinging to his last thread of consciousness, focusing on strong arms around him, the steady beat of footsteps through the tinny ringing in his ears.

After a while, the footsteps stutter, and he's jolted back to awareness by the sensation of being set down and propped against a wall with all the poise of a bloody, concussed scarecrow. He swings an arm out to brace himself. The other hangs limply at his side, at an angle that promises nothing good.

"Wh…why are we stopping?" he grates out, in a dust-choked voice.

"My right shoulder became dislocated in the blast," Jet explains, conversationally. "If I am going to carry you any farther tonight, I will need to treat it."

Juno blinks, sluggishly, and begins the slow slide down the wall to the ground. Sewers smell just as bad on every other planet as they do on Mars, it seems, but the familiarity is very close to being something like comforting. His head spins like a goddamn dreidel, and every part of his body he can still feel aches.

Beside him the big guy doesn't make a sound, but as he goes through a series of slow, calculated maneuvers and a careful stretch, Juno can see his eyes shining with pain even in the low light. He tests the limb, gingerly, and then makes to sit down next to Juno. Soot and ash have left a grey patina over the front of his brown leather jacket. There's a shallow cut beginning to clot just over one eyebrow.

Juno stares at him in dizzy silence for another minute. It takes some time for his brain to process what his body remembers so freshly and vividly - Rita's panicked warning, a second too late to dodge the imminent explosion completely. Standing frozen with indecision for a long moment, making the split-second call, and immediately feeling another body move to shield his own. Juno's breath feels tight in his chest. He lets it out in a heaving rush.

"Th…thanks, uh," he manages. "For. Y'know. Saving my ass."

It's only experience that allows him to identify the tiny quirk of Jet's lips as a smile. "Of course, Juno."

"Sorry I'm not better at, uh, staying saved."

"Buddy and I are agreed that your particular knack for getting into trouble often proves advantageous," Jet says calmly.

"Oh."

"That is not to say I am happy to see you put yourself in harm's way," he continues.

Juno grits his teeth, tries to bite back the urge to argue, because there's no pity or blame to be found in the big guy's even tone, and even with a headache this sharp Juno knows better than to pick a fight with someone who's being reasonable and trying to, god forbid, express an interest in his well-being. "…Yeah."

"But it is only fair to acknowledge that your quick thinking saved several lives as well as the integrity of our mission." Jet pulls out the data core he'd been carrying earlier, and tucks it back into his coat again. Some of the long hair is loose from his braid, plastered to his neck and falling in front of his eyes.

Juno can't resist a cocky half-smile. "Guess it's my lucky day, huh?" He tries to laugh and chokes on the plaster dust still coating his throat, doubles over to let out a few heaving coughs. Eye watering, he clears his throat and groans. "Tell you what, though, Big Guy, next time I'll let you have a turn playing frisbee with the grenade."

"That is a very kind offer," Jet says, pushing up onto his feet. "And I have no intention of accepting it. Are you ready to continue?"

Another brief attempt to take stock of his injuries comes up short, the thoughts slipping through Juno's head like water through a sieve. "Maybe?"

"We should proceed to the rendezvous point as quickly as we can," Jet says, bending to lift Juno into a bridal carry, one arm under his knees and the other at the small of his back. The movement sets off a chain reaction of complaints from Juno's personal collection of bruises and aches, and jostles his ribs hard enough to confirm that at a couple of them must be broken after all. "My comms is no longer operational, and the others will be anxious to confirm whether or not we survived."

Juno holds his breath until the pain settles below a manageable threshold, and squeezes his eye shut tight. "Rita's gonna kill me."

Jet is quiet, taking his soft, even steps forward like a man who's counting down until he can rest. After a minute, though, he speaks again. "I am glad that you are alive, Juno."

He furrows his brow, but can't angle his head in the right way to read the expression on the big guy's face. "Me too?"

"It was a close call," Jet says, voice flatter than usual, and Juno winces reflexively.

"I didn't kn--"

"Closer than it was in Dr. Hanataba's clinic," he finishes. "I was uncertain whether I would be able to resuscitate you."

Juno soaks this information in, quietly. Clings tighter with the arm hooked around Jet's shoulders. "I've tried before," he admits, softly. "The going out in a blaze of glory thing. This wasn't that."

Jet falters briefly, mid-step, but gives no other indication of having heard Juno's confession.

He rests his aching head against the big guy's shoulder, clears more dust from his throat. "Ransom and I, we were…we teamed up to steal this doomsday weapon from an obsessive xenoanthropologist. Got caught. Run through all these pointless experiments, knocked around when we didn't play nice, and by the end of it I had an Ancient Martian tumor growing in my head, and it was just me standing between her and this bomb that was supposed to wipe all life off the planet, and I was just so goddamn _tired_, you know?"

Jet is silent, and Juno swallows. "Surviving that felt like…like a letdown, back then. Like I couldn't even manage this…this one easy thing. But I'm glad I did. Get a chance to live long enough to want to keep living. _Use it as you see fit_, and all that."

The big guy hums thoughtfully. "You are not usually so forthcoming with personal information. Are you confiding this in me because you are concussed?"

"No!" Juno huffs, defensively, and winces. "Yeah? Maybe. Whatever." Jet chuckles, and he pushes on. "I just want you to know that I'm doing better, okay? I'm not…maybe I messed up, pulling that stupid stunt, making the sacrifice play back there, and chances are I'll do it again, but I'm better than I have been for a…for a long time." He hacks out another cough. "You're not getting rid of me that easy."

He can't see the smile quirk over Jet's face again, but he can hear it in his voice. "That is good to hear."

"Yeah." Juno sniffs, scrubbing decisively at his eye. "Hurts like a bitch, though."

Jet makes an abrupt grunt of concession. "I apologize. I fear I may have fractured a few of your ribs while performing the chest compressions."

Juno shrugs, and regrets it when the motion makes his chest flare with agony. "Nothing half a dozen bone-knitting injections can't fix, right?"

"Hm." 

Jet sets him down again, with a little more coordination this time, and begins prying apart the bars of a grate. Juno takes one fumbling step forward to help, and stops when he feels his knee start to buckle. After a few minutes there's enough space to squeeze through the gap, sideways, one at a time.

The big guy slips through, reaching back to keep Juno from falling flat on his face. "When I was a much younger smuggler," he begins, conversationally. "I worked alone." Juno grips tight to one of the bars and staggers on, teeth gritted, and when he sways on his feet Jet leans forward to catch him and lifts him into the air again. "Until one job landed me in an overturned hoverglider in an ice ravine in the southern tundra of Triton. It takes an average of twenty-six minutes to freeze to death in the windstorms there," he recites, calmly, "And I was faced with the realization that if I were to succumb then and there, there would be no one who knew to mourn me."

If he expects a response, Juno doesn’t give it. Honestly, Juno’s having enough trouble trying to process a coherent personal narrative from a man who took six months to tell him his goddamn name. 

“I do not work alone anymore,” Jet reiterates, with his usual air of complete anticlimax. 

“Yeah,” Juno agrees, in a thin voice. “Yeah, I get what you mean.” 

“We are nearly at the rendezvous point,” he says, like the two statements follow naturally. “You are welcome to fall unconscious again for the remainder of the journey.” 

“I’ll...take you up on that.” Juno nearly manages to get all the words out before he’s floating again, face pressed into Jet’s shoulder and nose full of the leathery smell of his jacket. 

The first indication that they’ve arrived is the flare of the Carte Blanche’s searchlights finding them, and the second is a distant shout. The echo of it rings sharp in Juno’s ears, and he blinks haphazardly into the light until Rita’s small silhouette enters his field of vision. 

“You brought him back, I knew you would, oh, Mistah Sikuliaq I could just kiss you---”

“Please do not,” Jet says quickly, while Rita flings her arms around Juno’s neck. Juno grunts in pain, his bad arm trapped against his side and his other still thrown over Jet’s broad shoulders. 

Rita backs off almost as quickly as she began, staring hesitantly at Juno and apparently determining he looks conscious enough to warrant a stern glare. “Boss,” she whispers, voice cracking. 

“Sorry,” Juno tells her, a little punch-drunk, and, “Is it okay if you’re, uh...fired? Right now?”

She throws her arms around him again, until Jet is practically carrying the both of them. “Oh, alright, Mistah Steel, but you gotta give me a chance to tell you how worried you had me later, ‘kay? I oughta put a tracker on you, I really should.” 

“You look like shit,” Vespa interrupts, and beside her Buddy offers Jet a slightly soppy smile.

“It’s good to see you, darling,” she pronounces, “Though of course you both look a bit peaky. Still, five minutes ago I’d have felt comfortable putting down money that at least one of you was a corpse, so I think overall this all evens out to a pleasant surprise.” 

Juno forces a slightly lopsided grin. “Didn’t think you’d count me out that easily, Bud.” 

She turns her smile on him, and it goes slightly pinched at the edges. “Well, you did jump on a live grenade, darling, even my optimism only runs so far.” 

“I have already debriefed him on this subject, Buddy,” Jet interjects, and she nods. 

“Very well, then, I suppose the chit-chat can wait.” Her organic eye flits over Juno’s face again, considering him carefully, before gesturing over her shoulder at the door. “Come on, you people, it’s past time we made tracks.” 

Juno follows the line of her gaze as far as the gangway of the Carte Blanche and catches a fleeting glimpse of another face, half in shadow, as well as the stricken expression that crosses it. By the time time Jet helps him onto the ship, he’s disappeared completely into another shadow.

While Juno peers down the hallway, slightly forlorn, Buddy meets his eye again. “Talk to him, darling,” she murmurs. “Sooner the better. He didn’t take it well, today.” 

“Don’t know if I can exactly track him down like this,” Juno grumbles, under his breath.

Buddy’s lips twist into a grin that indicates she means exactly what she says. “Oh, you leave that to me, Juno. Rest up now.” 

Vespa sidles up to the pair of them with an equally menacing expression on her face, though she’s foregone the pretense of the smile. “I got a bone-knitting injection with your name on it, Steel,” she rasps.

Juno grimaces. “Gee, thanks, you shouldn’t have.” 

He stumbles his way to the medbay still leaning against the big guy, and sits heavily on the cot, head still spinning but eyelid already heavy with the relief of being home and safe and still in more or less one battered and bruised piece. 

“Gonna stick around, Big Guy?” he asks, the words slurring with exhaustion. “I mean, your shoulder--”

“Either Vespa or the thief will have some business with you in a moment,” Jet dismisses. “I will wait outside.”

“Sure, but--” Juno pauses, breath hitching. “I said thank you, right?”

“You did.” 

“Well...thank you. Again, I guess.” Juno picks at the cotton threads of the sheeting, cradling his limp arm in his lap. “There some kind of upper limit to the number of times you’re gonna save my life?” 

Jet looks him over with his dark eyes, and shrugs. “We are friends. I do not intend to keep score.” 

Juno just nods, because he wouldn’t know what to say to that even if his brain hadn’t been lightly tenderized against the inside of his skull earlier. True to form, he says something completely stupid instead. “Cool, well. Let me know if I can ever...y’know. Return the favor.” 

It isn’t quite a smile, but there’s something unmistakably fond in the big guy’s face when he glances over his shoulder. “I will see you later, Juno. Good night.” 

True to form, he leaves too abruptly for Juno to get another word in edgewise. Still, he listens to the sound of his steady footsteps retreating down the hallway and into the distance, and sighs. “Yeah.”

**Author's Note:**

> poor juno he got mouth-to-mouth from jet 'brick shithouse' sikuliaq and he's too concussed to even remember it...can we get an f in the chat for this beleaguered bisexual...anyway i just love their dynamic beyond words and i'm so excited to see more of it in season 3
> 
> also im gonna slide this into bad things happen bingo as FILL #2: CPR


End file.
